Coal ash spill shows that all politics are not local for state Senate leader

Maybe it’s just life in our new and hyper-gerrymandered era in which a huge proportion of legislative seats are election-proof, but the age-old political aphorism that “all politics is local” does not appear to apply to some politicians. Take for instance, the man who is arguably North Carolina’s most powerful politician, State Senator Phil Berger.

In most parts of the world, you’d think that such disaster might send local elected officials into some sort of full-time emergency damage-mitigation mode. By all indications, however, that’s not the case in Eden. The only “news” on Senator Berger’s website and Twitter account today is his latest blame-shifting broadside against State Superintendent of Public Instruction June Atkinson over the controversy surrounding the senator’s ham-handed new law to retain third graders in public schools who fail high-stakes tests.

Of course in the present case, there might be some other factors at work too. Were Berger to actually make himself visible and available in the coal ash disaster, it might invite questions from reporters and citizens about why Berger and the rest of the General Assembly have been so busy dismantling environmental protections in the state (and why a giant energy monopoly with billions in profits each year allowed such giant spill in the first place).